Papillon
by Glenshadow9
Summary: The adorable Twins are back – does anything change when they turn fourteen? What would anyone expect? Some caffeine, some fluff, some high-school drama and all-out "butterflies".
1. Some Stuff Before You Read This

**Some stuff before you read this fic:**

**First of all there's no tragic or happy ending here, and no climax and no timeline and no change. It's just very monotonous with a lot of angst and smut and depression and some mild violence. Moderate swearing. And it's quite long.**

**Note, warning on rape scenes.**

**That's why I re-formatted my whole desktop background black and purple anyway, to fit the mood because otherwise I'd go drowning in the bar with a plushie stuck on my frill collar (****_what?_**** Did you just call me ****_gay_****? Geez).**

**If you're a strong believer in honour and justice or the type that's looking for stories with satisfactory endings I'd suggest you quit reading this, or if you want to read this just for the smut content then go ahead, you're welcome.**

**…Wait, wait. I forgot to mention the most important bit. This story is an AU remix of Akuno-P's Servant of Evil on a more modern note.**

**Meow, cheers.**

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_She laughed happily, staring at the butterfly in her net. It had pretty black and blue-green wings that glittered in the sun. It fluttered about delicately, with spindly legs and feelers and fur at its collar. She pinched it out of the net with awkward juvenile fingers and studied it in fascination._

_She popped it into her transparent butterfly cage. It fell into the bottom, flailing about flapping its wing. The other half of its torn wing fluttered down after it and draped itself motionlessly on the floor of the cage. She shut the lid with a snap._

_'Now now, be gentle with it.'_

_'Why?' It could fix back its wing with tape, or glue. It wasn't angry at her for being put in there. It wasn't even complaining. First of all it didn't talk._

_The butterfly crawled about on the bottom of the cage, its trembling wing shimmering prettily. She plucked some flowers and leaves and dropped them into the cage, along with a tiny container of water. Now it had a little diorama all to itself._

_She left it on top of the shoebox for everyone else to see when they came home. The very first butterfly she'd caught all by herself: she was proud._

_But they said, 'Let it go,' in their over-bearing adult voices, so she reluctantly took it outside once more and set it gently on a plant outdoors. It clung fragilely to a waxy leaf, beating its wing weakly. It still had work to do and it knew that._

_It started to rain, so she hurried back indoors._

_The next morning when she went back to check the butterfly was gone, nowhere to be seen._

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**Review plus fav with a pretty please, meow? :3**

**Thanks for reading.**


	2. Prologue

**Meow. (For a change - I'm getting bored of "hais".)**

**By the way – I meant a chocolate bar in the previous chapter. :P And yes, the passage had nothing to do with the story actually. But as you'd know we aren't allowed to upload author notes on their own. :P**

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**PROLOGUE – THE IRON GATE**

The hot afternoon sun poured a melting flood of heat haze down upon the arced pavement behind the scalding iron bars of the Gate. The blinding white _Houses_ loomed up from the arched ground, their bases blurry, giving the illusion of floating boxes. It was a strange and sinister world stretching out inside there, painted all grey and white and bleak black.

On the other side of the Gate was his home: _trees_ and verandas and comfortable shades. On the grassy planes of the spacious Outdoors, there was the bright congregation of architecture built from multi-coloured pieces of odd-shaped parts, all linked together in intricate bumps and bends. There was a green entrance archway beside the large tree with a hollow in its roots, and a ladder leading up to the platform and an orange exit chute. There were ground-level hollows, and large roofless salons and bridges and tunnels to climb through. He could navigate his way through these structures with his eyes closed.

The hollow in the roots was interesting. It always had a pool of this sticky, gooey substance in it that had a distinctive bitter-sweet-sour stink. His sister seemed to think the insects that got stuck in it were gross, but he thought they were funny. They flailed their horny legs around and buzzed very noisily, which seemed to get them stuck in the goo worse than before. Sometimes he wondered why they were so stupid.

There was a square space of fine gritty sand on the west end of the planes. He sometimes dug trenches or built hills and miniature hollows and valleys in it, when he got bored because the girls weren't around.

The indoors didn't really have that much worth mentioning. When you went in through the twin Doors you found yourself in this long corridor with drab bluish walls stuck with occasional big posters and weird distorted flowers, lined with lots of similar arthritic doors that were creepy at night. There was a big shiny brown desk they called the Front, and a large heavy door behind it where the Visitors from outside the Gate went into when they came.

When the Visitors came they shut the door. He didn't know because he had never been in there, but one or two residents from the rooms along the corridor would go in too, and came out after a while looking peaky or fluffy. Some of them left soon after, in rumbling cars that parked themselves outside the Gate.

Most of the residents were "girls". Apparently, though they didn't look it.

He didn't like mornings, especially the weird boring white mush the Blue Ladies handed out for Breakfast. The plastic chairs were tucked under the long splintery wooden tables where everyone sat down to eat. He preferred staying up late even after the sun had gone down, but apparently he wasn't allowed to do that, so he went to bed and stayed awake staring at the moonlit ceiling striped with shadows from the window grilles. His daily schedule was pretty much the same every day: he got changed in the morning and was sent out for Breakfast, and then they were trooped outside to the Outdoors, and then they came back in for Snack and then Nap, and spent some time in the Playroom while they took turns being taken into the Showers, and then had Supper and got sent to their rooms. To him the showers were a real soggy slippery slightly painful nightmare.

He also didn't like toothbrushes. They were rude.

The "others" slept together in the big room where they had naps, but for some reason he and his sister had a little room with two beds all to themselves. He wished they could go sleep with the others in the big room as well. There was plenty of space to spare in their room, but no one ever moved in. It sometimes got lonely.

One of the Blue Ladies always fussed around in the room he and his sister slept in. She seemed to like him a lot, and snuck him treats often. His favourite was a rare treat called _chocolate_, brown and hot and deliciously sweet in a mug. The Blue Lady made him some when he behaved good and made her happy. He wasn't boasting, but he seemed to be the one who got mugs of hot chocolate the most frequently. Although he felt nasty the next morning feeling weird and stiff all over and slightly sick, a surprise treat of chocolate was never unwelcome.

It was strange that one never remembered when they fell asleep, but it seemed to work that way, and that was that.

That was pretty much everything about his life, nothing else much worth mentioning… And oh, he had a sister.

Rin hated insects, and liked messing with water taps. Unlike him she didn't like big open spaces, so he had his secret hideout all to himself. His secret hideout was this square concrete box-space surrounded in tall stone walls, without a roof. The rooms they stayed in were under the floor there, straight under his feet when he stood. He'd found it when he'd climbed this dusty hidden staircase next to the Toilet.

On the other hand he didn't like small closed spaces like Rin did. He liked the way there was no roof in his hideout, because he could greet his friend each time he climbed up there. She had different moods depending on the day: she was sometimes grey, sometimes bright blue, sometimes cloudy and occasionally a very pretty pink or orange with yellow, red and purple streaks. He felt good in an indescribable way when he stared up at her. He'd talk about all sorts of stuff and she'd listen, like the weird Cars that passed by the Gate and how they stank, or how awesome that "Road-roller" he'd seen in there had been, or which girl came over from in there to play with him today and what she said and did, or how she purred and liked being petted, or how she didn't like getting wet just like him or how her kittens were really fluffy and cute.

Rin was bossy and fussy and looked very much like him, except that she was a so-called "girl". He didn't quite get the difference, though, because they sounded the same.

Right now they'd just finished Breakfast and were Outdoors doing whatever they chose to do. Rin was piling stones over there by the corner of the Wall. He stared in fascination at a reflection of himself in the smoky glass pane; large sky-blue eyes that took up nearly one third of his face blinked back at him, with cheery pink clouds under them, and a small shoulder outline that shrugged when he shrugged his, and pale yellowish hair that fluffed out when the wind ruffled his.

He tilted his head sideways in mild wonder, studying the blurry purple butterfly smudged in his left cheek. This morning it looked a bit bleaker. Last time it'd stopped on his shoulder with dark red-purple wings. It appeared one random morning, and then left very quickly, like the falling raindrops when they disappeared into the ground. Fascinating.

He jerked his gaze away as a bush behind him suddenly rustled. 'N-Naro…!?'

She streaked out from under the thick leaves, pointed ears pinned flat to her head, her eyes open so wide their whites were visible. Her dark tabby stripes were a mere blur. With a cry close to a shriek she leapt past him and scrambled up the tree he was sitting beside, disappearing among the branches. He peered up into the tree in bewilderment, trying to look for her. 'Naro?' he called uncertainly.

There was a sharp hiss, followed by a deep, unidentifiable growl behind him.

He spun around. The next moment his heart leapt into his mouth.

He couldn't find his voice – he just stared frozen in terror at the huge black nightmare that had flown over the Gate, landing heavily right in front of him. Its yellow fangs were huge, bared and visible in its wide long mouth, something slimy trailing from its bottom lip. Its tattered, scarred hide stretched taunt over its rippling muscles, the bones protruding hideously from its sides, ridged spine coiled tense with quivering sinew, cracked razor claws clogged with fur, plastered a dark and sticky red– His gaze jerked upwards.

Its eyes– its _eyes_. Burning, molten hatred. Fury and thirst and raving hunger. They had no interest in anything. They wanted to break his skin; clamp down his throat and scatter him alive. Nothing was going to stop them. Bite, tear, sate. They said so. And they were powerful. They could.

But they weren't looking at him.

A gruesome growl ripped from its deep lungs.

'R- Rin…!' His voice was hoarse, trembling.

She didn't hear him, too intent in her task. She hummed on cluelessly, pausing to pick up a small stone that tumbled off the top of her pile, frowning in annoyance.

_Rin!_

She flinched. Her head jerked towards his direction.

Her eyes went round.

She didn't move. Her face was completely white as she trembled like ice.

'Rin…'

A scream blotted out the next growl.

The thing's huge head swivelled around towards the source of the sound, followed by its claws and then its wiry body. The next moment he found himself scrambling towards Rin without knowing why. She was frozen, shaking all over. People came running towards them from all sides.

She clutched his shoulder and he clutched hers, screwing their eyes shut in fear at the explosion of noise that followed. Like sounds he'd never heard before – up to every thunderous footfall and coarse yell, and a constant, wordless snarling that clawed at his eardrums. Something foreign, so many… Overwhelming.

And then it was all over, in no time at all that was forever.

'Thank the Lord… You're alright.' A hand landed gently on the top of his head, touching his cheek and then his back.

He wasn't listening.

She'd almost got hurt… He'd almost…

Big tears were swelling in his eyes. His shoulders trembled. She squeezed his hand and blinked several times, still looking stunned.

'Rin,' he mumbled.

She patted his shoulder reassuringly like the adults did, like she was telling him there was nothing to be scared of. But she didn't get it the point. He was scared, but not scared, not in that way. He wanted to cry when he looked at her.

He only looked up when something quietly stirred outside their world.

She'd slithered down from her refuge up in the branches, watching him with wary green eyes. When he stretched out his fingers, she slowly came towards him nose-first, like she always did.

Something wasn't right.

'Naro… Naro?' She limped along, dragging herself, and then slumped on the ground, sides heaving. What was wrong? Why wasn't she getting up? Why was her side all coloured red? Why was it so… _distorted_?

He crawled over to her. She didn't move. He stayed there for a long while – or maybe it had been short. Her sides gradually stopped quivering. Her pelt was colder than usual when he touched her. Like it was suddenly being chilled instead of warmed. Why was she so cold? The sun was up. The air was sweltering. She was so weirdly out of place in here.

And then large, careless hands suddenly scooped her up off the ground and took her away. Another hand led him in the opposite direction before he could stop them. He tottered off, in a daze. 'Come. Go wash your hands.'

His hands? Why?

He stared down at his own palms and found them streaked with copper. Weird.

'Don't you worry now, yes? They'll get rid of that thing for sure.'

He turned at the commotion still raging on, further away now just outside the Gate.

Yelps and barks and whines of furious indignation. It looked less intimidating that way. They had some sort of metal ring stuck round its neck, attached to a long pole. They were trying to push it into a large, tall, square white car that seemed to be spewing out ash-coloured fumes just by staying there, turning the air murky. The bitter acid stink made his eyes water.

As the double-doors of the white car finally banged shut, everything concluded, like the ending of a storybook. The evil monster was gone, and life went back to haven happily ever after.

He stared in muteness at the end of the Road where the car had vanished. Why…

It'd looked so scared.

It was huge and black and fierce – but it'd looked so _scared_. Whatever it had been.

If it was scared, why didn't it run? It wasn't like it was terrified stiff, only scared desperate.

Where had it gone to? How did anyone "get rid of" that thing? It was huge and moving and solid and fearsome and so _alive_. It might have killed Rin. It would have. It almost did. It felt so wrong for it to be trapped in a car.

And where had they taken Naro? He was worried about her.

He heard a familiar small mewl from inside a bush. A tiny, pink, furry black nose pushed itself out from among the brambly branches, round green eyes staring unblinkingly at him with their usual disdain. Where was his mother?

He broke into a smile. 'Hello Lyn.'

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**Yup. Make any assumptions you will.**

**Review, please? With a fluffy drop-dead-adorably imploring meooow? :3**


	3. Part 1 - High School, Bananas & Spices

**Meow!**

**Alright, before we go any further: this is a GENDER SWITCH. Basically guys' and girls' roles turned the other way round, simply because there aren't enough male Vocaloids to make this story work.**

**Approximately nine years later.**

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**PART 1 (RIN) – HIGH SCHOOL, BANANAS & SPICES**

1.

Len came home from school later than usual that day.

Rin looked up from her pumpkin pastry as he walked into the kitchen, looking irritable. His yellow hair was as messy as it had been forever, maybe more than usual today. She immediately noticed his new earrings; this morning they'd been dark blue crescents, but now they were purple butterflies. They were a nice glossy black, with glittery purple patterns. She always wondered where he got all his earrings – there was quite a collection in his bedroom drawer next to hers. If she opened it she would probably find half of it occupied with earrings, the other half she could only just imagine what.

'So…, anything new?' she asked him as he wrenched open the cabinet, grabbed the coffee tin and measured out several teaspoons of dark brown powder – more like gravelly lumps, in her opinion – into a large lemon mug. 'Anything… _interesting_ at school today?'

'Hmm.'

'Nice earrings. Butterflies, huh?'

'Whatever.'

'_Again_?'

'Yes.'

'You got dumped?'

'No.'

'You dumped her?'

'Yes.'

'Who this time?'

'Meiko.'

Rin gagged. '_Meiko_? But she's a _Sixth_ Grader. She's… _How old is she_?' What the hell. She discreetly coughed up flakes of pumpkin-mixed pie.

'_So_? Stop making a fuss of everything.'

'The usual thing? _Again_?'

'Duh.'

'You're gonna get your taste numbed again if you add any more than that,' she commented drily as he added a seventh teaspoon of coffee powder into his mug. She remembered he used to like cocoa, but he'd switched to coffee after he threw up drinking chocolate several years ago, and had never touched any since. He'd never told her why, so she assumed it was something to do with the trauma of puking.

'Whatever.'

Len irritably jabbed the **_Pour_** button and filled his mug to the brim, sploshing out a little of the thick contents over the counter. With a sigh, he sat down beside Rin and sipped his steaming drink. He relaxed down into his wooden chair.

'This time it came _really_ close – like – _this_ much,' he gushed blandly, pinching a quarter inch of air between his thumb and index finger. He flicked his tongue about with a grimace like he'd just found something slimy in his mug. Nothing less unpleasant than a newt, judging by the look on his face. 'I had to knock her out.'

'…Ah.'

'With a _pillow_. And she got me bloody almost nicked for that.'

'Oh – Ouch.'

Len sighed again. 'So I had to un-arrest myself again – whatever. The garbage. That's about it. Did I miss out anything?' He folded over flat on the table with a dull bonk.

She nodded once. He was undeniably good at that kind of stuff, though she didn't particularly agree with some of his methods. 'So you quit on her.'

'Obviously.'

Rin shook her head exasperatedly. Len had been doing the same old thing for the past year and a half or so.

It all started when Len broke up with Miku, the Third Grader with pretty turquoise hair who he'd been going out with for about two and a half years, since Elementary school. He'd _seemed_ very close to her, but the very next day he got hooked up with a new girl somehow, only to break up less than a month later. From then on he kept going out with new girls in increasingly erratic intervals; nowadays he seemed to be breaking up at least twice a week (pardon her exaggeration but it felt like it), and each and every time he went off to buy new earrings when that happened, like an idiosyncratic time-out. Rin had given up trying to keep track of his life when she lost count after the first twelve or so, and she had an impression Len didn't remember either.

Everyone knew Len was Miss Vogue (and a big bold WTF to that), even though he was a First Grader. The thing was that for some reason – of course, there was no one below First Grade in school – he usually ended up with girls older than him. For a while that would be fine, but then things would go just like the usual damned scenario; those were the drawbacks of dating a Sixth or Seventh Grader, nowadays Fifth and Forth as well. They'd decide he wasn't old enough for them after all, according to him – though Rin personally thought Len wasn't old enough to even start going out with girls (that-weren't-friends) – and then there would be the usual _yucky_ breakup scene (though she never made sense of what he was trying to explain), and then Len would come home a bit late again with a new pair of earrings and occasionally mushed up hair and the sort looking extremely irritable, and go swimming in a mug of saturated caffeine. It had almost become like a "monthly inconvenience" for him. Rin would usually just make sure he wasn't too messed up before returning to the normal schedule.

To summarise, she more or less thought the whole issue was very stupid.

She herself had a huge crush on a hot Sixth Grader with gorgeous dark blue hair, called Kaito – it was no big secret, and she's given up denying it to Len quite a while ago. Len in turn had grown bored of making a big girly fuss over it. The only problem was that Kaito didn't like her back, and instead he liked someone else, another Sixth Grader. And the ironic thing was that – as she only recently found out – the subject of his attention was the same girl who'd tried to mess with her brother today.

'How old is she?' she asked Len, slightly annoyed. 'How on earth did you end up with her anyway?' She wrenched a bag of crisps open and viciously chomped on a handful. Even Kaito – whom she thought was pretty hot, obviously – was having trouble with making the girl even look his way for more than two seconds, though she had to admit she wasn't too unhappy about that.

He shrugged. 'Don't ask me. I've absolutely no idea.' He yaawned.

'You know, you don't have to be nice every girl who wants to go out with you,' she snapped in irritation. 'Just say fucking no like everyone else does. You realise there's this weird trend going on that you get part of the spotlight when you hang out with Miss Populars?' Rin rapped a knuckle on his head. 'Only there's something wrong with you that makes their brains go bonkers when they do. I think you should quit.'

Len sighed. 'And then it'll be the _usual_. Stop calling me Miss.'

'The usual, huh?'

'Yup, just like the last time, and the one before that,' he droned tonelessly like he was reciting a textbook extract. For all she knew he _was_.

'When was that? The last time I recall was several centuries ago. Maybe the traditions might have changed a little?' she replied sarcastically.

'I don't really feel like giving it a try. …I'm bored of this talk. Remember the last time I did that I had to deal with _two_ girls at once and a bunch of _friends_ and needed to be _rescued_ by Mi– …whatever.'

_Allegedly_, retold by Len. But he always made things sound more dramatic than they really were. No one else in school seemed to ever discuss that subject; in fact they rarely discussed anything concerning him other than his non-existent cat ears. 'You're sooner or later gonna end up having a breakup history with every girl in school. Alright honestly – you're terrible. Do you even see them as people?'

'People, who act like objects. Can we stop this weird interview?'

Rin ignored him and paused for a moment, trying to figure that out. 'That doesn't make much sense.'

Len sighed exaggeratedly for about the one hundredth time. 'Meaning, they think they're like objects which I'm okay with dumping and getting a new one in less than an hour, or _I'm_ being treated like an object.'

'Exactly. A very convenient sex object.' Why didn't he see that? He had to wake up some time.

He took a large swig of coffee. 'Hmm. Nicely said. True, that.' His expression suggested he was thinking otherwise. 'You mean a cardboard cat.'

'So… Who're you going out with next?' Rin teased with a half-hearted smirk.

'It's not like _I_ choose. I'm tired of stupid romance and drama. I think this time I'm officially gonna quit.'

Somehow, he always said that, and the next morning she'd find him cheerfully chatting away with girls. She rolled her eyes. 'Good for you. You seriously need a break.'

'I do indeed. Do you mind if I take the couch?'

'Go ahead.'

'_Thanks_.' Len slumped off to the sofa and threw himself into a pile of cushions, burying his head under two of them.

'Goodnight,' called Rin. The reply was a muffled groan.

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**Yeah, it's a slow start. With slow progress. This is chapter one.**

**Review, please, if you liked it? :3 Hopefully no spelling mistakes?**


	4. Chapter 2

**Yess yes yes yes OMG I'VE FINALLY FOUND THE OFFICAL FF FANDOM FOR VOCALOID! Why the hell did I never look under the Misc. section? Urgh.**

**Meow.**

**Soo, here comes Chapter 2 (officially the fourth chapter but just forget that, hmm?) ****Enjoy**– **Alright, it's depressing and isn't exactly the stereotype of "enjoyable", I know. Whatever.**

**Cheers.**

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2.

_There was a shift in the world, as if the angle of its gravity had suddenly changed. The whole room spun around him, and then tilted back down to rest in its original position, just leaving a dull pounding in the side of his skull where he sat leaning heavily into his backrest._

_'_Oh_,' was all the reaction he could manage._

_Right…?_

_It took about another minute or two for his brain to fully process the piece of ridiculously simple information. The man sitting in the spinning chair opposite him waited patiently with a slight bitter twist at the corner of his mouth._

_'Oh,' he repeated, slower this time. 'Well, I suppose…'_

_He felt strangely detached, devoid of emotions. He felt weird: like he had grown heavier and lighter at the same time. Most of all he felt… calm. Calm, and bored, as one would feel when they'd exhaled a large sigh after stopping halfway through a complicated bit of mathematics to find that the whole equation was wrong from the start. In a way this was an upset equation, but unlike mathematics it had no logical laws._

_Or perhaps it was simply that he couldn't find the line of logic in it._

_He stared again at the piece of printing still held in his hand and read it carefully once more, although he didn't know what it was he wanted to read in it. Perhaps he wanted it to be an interpretation mistake. Or perhaps he felt he had to read it again to believe it. …They were both the same thing._

_The printed figures were as sound and plain as before. Well, he hadn't been expecting it to alter like magic. He'd expected worse of course… alright he hadn't, but that was that and not worth complaining about._

_'Do you get people like this often?' he asked quietly._

_The man tilted his head solemnly in acknowledgement. The answer was obvious, what with his profession._

_'What do they say? Do _you_ say anything?'_

_'Well. It's best not to pry into personal matters…'_

_'True.'_

_'…How old are you?'_

_'Thirteen.'_

_They both fell silent, each for different reasons._

_After leaving an appropriately sympathetic margin the man broke the suspension by asking, 'Do you still want to keep to your decision? I'd personally say it isn't an advisable course of action.'_

_'Yes.' Obviously._

_'Your parents…?'_

_'No.'_

_'Oh?'_

_'Um… Thank you,' he said robotically, as he stood to leave. He tottered slightly._

_'Would you like to sit down for a while? There's a vending machine outside.'_

_'No I'm fine, thanks.'_

_'If you say so… Are you sure? You look pale.'_

_He carefully folded the paper and made to put it in his grey-and-yellow sling bag – stuck with cat appliques – and then thought better of it and took it out again. He held it out towards the man, who was removing his black-framed spectacles. 'You know what, I don't think I want this. Can you burn this for me? Just pretend I never came here.'_

_He walked away towards the door and then turned around one more time, and smiled. 'I'll see you in two years' time, if you remember? I hate red geraniums yeah? Don't you dare or I'll curse you to hell,' he laughed._

_The man smiled politely in reply, tucking the paper into the drawer in his desk._

_On the way home he dropped by the game centre, something he rarely ever did. He appreciated the lax warm air of the early summer, even voluntarily stopping by to cringe at an adorable-looking frog in a hydrangea bush. He felt a lot calmer than he had in a long while; deadlines didn't necessarily harass you, it seemed._

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**Sorry for the drastic changes in chapter lengths. And sorry for screwing up the sense of time. This chapter is another flashback.**

**Really hope you enjoyed, though – review, please? ;3**


	5. Chapter 3

**Meow.**

**Okay, okay, note: The Vocaloids in here aren't their canon characters. At all – if there ****_is_**** such a thing as "canon" for Vocaloids. In other words, THIS IS AN A.U. So no flamers please, at least not for the swearing and makeup.**

**I'd be happy enough receiving flamers on other stuff, though, thanks.**

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3.

The next morning Rin woke up to find she was nearly late for school. She jumped out of bed and tumbled into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She grabbed the tawny liquid eyeliner bottle, fumbling with it. She swore when her fingers slipped and she dropped it into the sink.

What? Fourteen and already using makeup? Fuck off. She did what she wanted to.

Len poked his tousled head in through the gap in the door. 'What's up? We're gonna be late for school – you need help with that?'

'Len, can't you knock before you come into a bathroom with a girl occupying it?' she said irritably.

'Hmm. Technically speaking I'm not exactly _in_ it at the moment. Here, pass me that.' He held out a hand for the eyeliner. Rin carelessly combed her hair while he attempted to pry the pointed cap open with forever-neat fluorescent yellow nails. He swore too and picked it open with the hooked end of a nail file.

'You mind if I use first?'

'Hmm. Just hurry up.'

Len was done in less than ten seconds anyway. 'How do you always get it right so fast?' Rin asked him in annoyance as she struggled to steady her hand with the thin brush suspended in mid-air, taking twice the time he did. Len was so impatient that she always got it wrong with him telling her to hurry up from behind.

He shrugged. 'Because I'm not fussy.'

Fussy or not, they looked darn perfect. It wasn't fair; _she_ was supposed to be the girl, not Len. The blasted strange thing was that using eyeliner actually served to _not_ worsen his appearance, which seemed rather wrong because he was a boy. He actually looked… well, pretty in it, which sounded _very_ wrong. The bottomline was, it sounded wrong, but it suited him. Everything he ever did was feminine – makeup, shopping, fangirling, his earrings – but they somehow felt natural. For all Rin knew he would probably still look mundane standing at a concierge in a lace puffball skirt.

It just wasn't fair. How was it her_ brother_ was prettier than her? Twin or no, that shouldn't be logically possible unless she was inexpressibly hideous. Personally she didn't want to believe that, neither did she think that was the case, looking at herself in the mirror. Whatever was wrong was with Len, not her. He had gold-flaxen _locks_ and thin mannequin hands with fingers that looked longer in manicures and bony shoulder blades and fucking Cinderella ankles and Elsa doll eyes. Where in hell did you get an "all-positive" teenage boy with girl curls? And somehow he still looked like a boy.

They hurried downstairs with their schoolbags, Len drowsily tripping on the stairs. She laughed and ignored his clumsy curses. How very pleasant, first thing in the morning before even saying good morning.

Mum was already downstairs at the table reading a newspaper over her plate of buttered toast. Her thick, wavy auburn hair was done up in a neat bun at the back, and she was in her working suit. She had her usual lipstick and makeup on, with natural-pink blush that made her look more like a teenager than an actual woman. Rin sometimes liked to think of her as a kind of big sister. It was nice to have a Mum this young _and_ pretty – everyone at school envied her. Mum peered up as they came down. 'Good morning. You're late today – you'll need to hurry or you'll be late for school.'

'Yeah,' Rin said. 'Morning, Mum.' Len mumbled something similar behind her. 'Breakfast?' he turned to her and asked with a big yawn.

Oh, right. Breakfast… 'Nevermind. I can't be bothered,' she muttered.

He made a sound close to snorting and trotted off to the kitchen.

'You don't need to go to work?' Rin asked Mum. She nodded absently. 'I do. Don't worry, I don't need to be there at seven today. Be careful when you cross the road, okay?'

Rin rolled her eyes. 'I'm not an Elementary kid, Mum. I'm four and a half feet tall, not three feet.'

'Alright, if you say so. Be careful anyway.'

'Another car accident?' Len asked mildly, peering into Mum's newspaper as he trotted past them. He narrowed his eyes in disgust.

'Yes. It's really tragic. Three children were hit by a car… Terrible, isn't it? Their parents…'

Len shook his head with a snort. 'Cuckoo. Bang.'

Mum frowned at him. 'Don't say that. It might very well have been you,' she told him sternly. Rin smirked.

'Sorry.' Len peered at Mum with a slightly wry expression.

She didn't know exactly why, but her friends all said they envied her house like hell. To Rin it didn't look particularly unusual: square and white and two-storey high (with a dusty half-storey attic), with a small not-so-neat bramble-hemmed garden with a yellow rose bush, topped with a tiled triangular brown roof that made it resemble a ginormic slab of tiramisu cake. After all, she'd lived here all her life so she couldn't compare it. She sometimes thought it was somewhat larger than most of her friends' houses but she didn't really count that as a merit, since a large house only meant more distance to walk to get from one room to another. There were three washrooms, two upstairs and one downstairs and a bathroom further in on the ground floor. She'd never bothered to count the number of black-framed windows large and small scattered on all sides of the house. There was a wood-and-tile kitchen and a small pantry, two bedrooms and a big storeroom, a living-slash-dining with two sofas and a regular flatscreen TV and the usual furniture, a wooden-railed staircase and a descending ladder leading up to the attic. She couldn't see what was so _lavish_ about it – none of them were stuff people could go without. (One of her friends had once pinkly said she liked the concept of _two _bedrooms, but Rin hadn't quite gotten why.) Oh, and they had a car in the garage. A Peugeot-something with a cute face she didn't bother to know, but everyone else had a car too.

She wished Mum would allow sleepovers; it was no fun not being able to invite her friends over during the holidays. They could visit of course, but not overnight, apparently. She was annoyed that Len had so enthusiastically agreed with Mum – the only girl he'd allow in their room was her.

Rin opened the front door and trotted out into the frigid winter air, puffing out clouds of white breath. Needless to say the roses weren't in bloom, more or less covered in a slick jacket of frost. What a shame. The garden looked bleak and bleary without them. She stuck her hands in her light down orange pockets and pulled up her hood, teeth chattering. She tucked in her pink knitted scarf with woolly white rabbits marching along its length (she was horrible at crocheting and those kind of headache-inducing stuff but Len incomprehensibly was quite fond of them). She scowled at the way her sweater fluffed out at the front, and pulled it out again.

She remembered she'd once messed with the rose bush during early Elementary. She'd experimentally poured ink in the ground to see if the flowers would come out black. The whole plant more or less had, but of course not in the intended way. She'd told Mum it was Len in her panic and was quite surprised when he didn't protest. He'd never said why, so she'd assumed it was one of those immature and annoying see-I'm-more-grown-up-than-you impulses.

She turned round for Len; he was still at the doorway.

'Bye Mum. Love you.' He swiftly pecked Mum on the cheek and hurried out after Rin. How sickeningly lovely. She scowled at him as he caught up. He noticed her scowl. 'What?'

'You're disgusting.'

'Thanks. Oh, by the way…' he carelessly dug his hand in his bag and handed her a banana. 'Eat.'

'…'

School was pretty much the same that day and boring as ever. Especially as the daily curriculum drew closer to its end, Rin shot occasional, increasingly impatient glances at the clock on the wall throughout the lessons, mind wandering to the school gate, willing the stupid fat needle to move faster.

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**...Hmm. That was kind of boring. :/ Thanks for reading.**

**Review, please? :3**


	6. Chapter 4 (Some Ridiculous Cheese)

**Meow.**

**Sorry (actually no), too lazy to add any forenotes. There isn't much to explain on this. No more rants, I still have too much neglected fangirling left to do...**

**Yes, yes, my writing is boring. Go ahead and say, better out than in... Hmm. Wait, who was it that said that again? It sounds reallyreallyreally familiar, like from some famous movie. Someone do me a favour and tell me? :3**

**...Whatever. I forgot to upload this last week - enjoy.**

**And oh - damn all the stupid grammatical errors to Hell Number Nine for me? ;D Thanks, I'm aware of their existence.**

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4.

'Hi, Meiko,' the guy said. He sounded nervous. 'You're looking good today.'

Rin watched him from behind, by the school gate. She always looked forward to these few minutes here after school when classes got boring. She had her face turned down so she appeared to be thumbing her phone screen, but her eyes were riveted to the guy obliviously chatting ahead on the path with a few of his friends (pray don't call this stalking, this was maybe but it wasn't). Her heartbeats hitched slightly as he smiled at something.

Damn, that smile.

He was wearing a navy and white winter jumper on top of his black uniform shirt today, and sleek sable trousers – quite scanty in cold weather, she couldn't help noticing. He had his trademark blue scarf on like always. He'd be on his last year at school soon: he looked little different from a teacher. …Only they weren't as cheerful or hot or s– ahem, well. That reminded her – he was going up to Seventh Grade in a few months: and that meant she'd miss him from next year onward… He'd graduate, and then he was going to leave.

And then she'd never see him again? …No, she wouldn't think about that for now.

She remembered the day she'd met him with a hint of nostalgia. It was a few weeks after she'd entered First Grade. The seniors had been playing dodgeball in the courtyard, and she'd been walking by when the stupid ball hit her in the head. He'd rushed up to her and… Ah. It was embarrassing to think about. There was Len of course with an icepack, but she'd been too preoccupied to listen to him, gone all dreamy and vague and pink in the school infirmary. Her face was so hot that Len went to borrow a thermometer from the nurse to check if she had a fever.

His forever-gorgeous ultramarine-blue hair gleamed in the afternoon sun. His matching sapphire eyes – she could just make them out, so serene, from this distance – were staring at– were… ah. Not at Rin, of course. Like that was even possible.

_You're looking good today_. How she wished she could hear that from him said to her even once, even if it was some poltergeist of a dream. She loathed Meiko – she was smoothly taking the compliment like it was only due. Like him being nice to her was something she expected normally. Like… pfft.

As Len had pompously informed her (she hadn't admitted it of course), she was besotted with Kaito.

She'd left Len behind at the shoeboxes on the ground floor. He'd opened the cover and had had to put down his bag to pick up the avalanche of mostly sealed papers (and some other unmentionable stuff) that had tumbled out, albeit with rather a lot of cussing. Rin had just scowled and stalked away. Maybe _he_ had more than a bit to do with her frustration.

There was no way she wanted to be like him – no way, no bloody way – that was just… just disgusting, but she wished she had just a bit of his popularity. She admitted it, she wasn't at all popular, maybe she wasn't even neutral, by the looks of it sometimes she even thought everyone secretly disliked her…

Maybe she was thinking too far. She… she had friends, didn't she? Like Neru and Renka and Lily and maybe Len. No, Len was her brother. Well.

Speaking of.

'Awwh, you didn't miss me?' Len snivelled somewhere behind.

Rin sniffed in disgust and turned her back on him and his _friends_.

He laughed. 'Nahh, just kidding. We all missed you at school y'know.'

Muttered agreements, somewhat toneless.

'Don't lie,' said a familiar high voice with its constant hint of metal. 'Lemme guess, you've forgotten my name already.'

There was a pause. 'It's… umm, it started with an N, right? N… Naro– ah, _Neru_! Right?' Len pulled.

'I knew it! I knew it, you got it wrong. You liar!'

'What?' Len faltered. 'No wait – it-it's Neru. I'm sure it was Neru. Wasn't it? Yeah, definitely!'

'Hah! I can't believe you fell for that. Don't tell me you actually forgot!'

The girls giggled.

'Bet you ten I'll forget it again tomorrow? Looks like you'll have to keep reminding me... Naro.'

Rin scowled, jammed in her earphones and tuned their chattering out. Listening to them made her want to puke.

The sky was fresh and cloudless. The air was wet and dry at the same time and chill with the scent of frigid rain. It had been raining since morning up till a while ago, luckily for everyone going home. The paths were still muddy with melted frost but they wouldn't get wet. The pale sun shone from a leaning angle over the roof of the school building, tinting the whitewashed walls a creamy pastel orange.

Rin stubbornly stared ahead until she couldn't see Kaito anymore – staring straight at his back like she was hoping just staring would make him turn around, and then suddenly looking away feeling confused, then staring at him again – and then released a loud sigh. She didn't know why, she just felt like sighing. The way he looked at Meiko. He looked at her like – like… She didn't want to see Meiko there at the other end of his gaze, felt like mentally deleting her from her vision at least so she couldn't see the girl, but needless to say that was impossible. Hell the girl looked intolerably smug.

She tried sighing again. A long, heavy, calming kind of sigh. She took in several more slow breaths before straightening to go home herself.

She stopped short when her bag suddenly floated off her back with a weird lurch.

'Damn, what d'you put in there?' Miss Annoying asked ignorantly. She'd left her bunch of girls behind and veered over to the gate. Everything came in bunches with her: glitter pens, girls, bananas, pills. …And packets. Maybe.

'Get off me, Len,' Rin snapped.

'Pretty slimy,' he said, carelessly nodding ahead. He carefully slipped the canvas straps off her back and slung it over his shoulder.

'_What_?'

'Slimy,' he repeated nonchalantly. 'He's gonna regret it.'

Oh– What the *–? Rin burst into involuntary giggles. 'Is that supposed to make me feel better?' she forced herself to straighten her face and asked drily.

Len grinned. 'No. What made you think that? I was just saying, as a statement.'

'Pervert.'

'_Wha_?' he spluttered.

'I was just saying, as a statement. It's true.' She smirked. 'All that gloppiness.'

'I did _not_!' Len bawled, going red. 'Did not, so totally did not! I didn't mean _literally_!'

Rin peered at him with a well-fixed frown. 'What are you talking about, Len?' she asked coolly. 'Something rather inappropriate?' She crossed her arms in (partly) bluff contempt.

He mumbled something nonsensical and stared down at the ground, pouting.

…

Kaito, Kaito, Kaito. Ah, God.

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**Review, please? I do hope you will feel so obliged as to do so, urged by this unbelievably stupid and incomprehensible sentence.**


	7. Chapter 5

**Meow.**

**One really short chapter coming up... Meh. It kind of turned out a bit of a failure, but nevermind, as I said, this story is unnecessarily and ridiculously slow-paced.**

**Approximately some five more boring chapters or so until slight progress... I'm getting bored so I'll do a countdown. xP**

**And sorry, I did some random editing.**

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5.

Rin had a little secret.

Besides her crush on Kaito, that was, which wasn't exactly a secret because a lot of people knew.

This wasn't exactly a _secret_, either. She just didn't mention anything whatsoever about it at school or anywhere outside the house, that was all. Even in the house she only mentioned it on rare occasions, only when circumstances required; it was too normal to be worth mentioning. It was too little to be called a secret.

She wasn't particularly embarrassed about it. She'd never really considered it that way.

Of course not.

She just didn't tell anyone because she didn't want them to gape.

She casually pulled off her socks, loosened her tie, shrugged off her shirt, and then let her shorts slide down her calves and stepped out of them. She basically inelegantly stripped and dumped her clothes into the laundry basket beside the washing machine.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about that, she was going to take a bath, that was all.

She opened the sliding door and delicately stepped in onto the slightly ridged peach tiles. Inside, warm, faintly scented steam was permeating the enclosed space, rolling off the surface of the brightly coloured grass-green bathwater. It gave the whole atmosphere a kind of misty, glowing effect she always liked to appreciate; it felt very comfortable.

She pulled out the plastic stool from under the rack and unhooked the shower handle from the foggy tiled wall. Like any other usual day she proceeded to douse her flyaway flaxen hair and foam it with shampoo, wishing she had dense pretty hair like Mum.

Nowadays she'd also started using conditioner. It took a bit more time, but it made her hair smoother. The perfume smelled nice, too – a rich, honeyed, heavily sweet kind of incense.

There was a mirror on the wall she sat facing, fogged up by all the steam. She saw her own watery reflection in it, and gave a quiet sigh. Damn, talk about mannequins. If she had half the curves Meiko had by next year she'd have won the annual lottery (also counting that she was under-aged and couldn't buy a ticket).

She'd also switched to scented soap.

She pumped out a generous amount onto her big fluffy sponge and indulged herself luxuriously foaming up from head to toe. The thick, silky foam smelled sweet and pleasant. Then she washed it all down with a steaming stream of hot water. That felt gloriously, indescribably good at the end of a tiring day – she felt all that dirtiness disappear clean off her, along with the white feathery foam smoothly sliding down her length to caress her ankles.

'Seriously. How long do you take to wash your hair?' a lazy voice said from behind her.

'…

'It's none of your business,' she snapped in reply.

There was a small sneeze. 'Do you really need to use that conditioner?'

'It's mine, not yours. _You_ aren't using it so shut up.' She shook out her wet hair and combed it with her fingers, trying her best not to care and get on with her own stuff.

Len had his arms laid flat along the rim of the bathtub, with his head tilted sideways resting on his elbow. He yawned sleepily and narrowed his half-closed eyes. 'Hurry up. I'm bored.'

'Seriously? What, not enough curves for you?'

'I don't give a damn about your bony ass.'

'Then stop gawking.'

Len snorted. 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, when will my–'

'...Just shut up.'

'Just shut up.'

'Don't copy me.'

'Don't copy me.'

'Stop copying me.'

'Stop copying me.'

'_Shut up!_'

He grinned and splashed green bathwater at her back. She scowled.

Len yelped and spluttered as a whole load of cold water splashed him over the head. 'Fine… sorry.' He sank down under the steaming surface, meekly blowing out air bubbles.

Yes, what she didn't tell anyone was that there was this doppelganger poltergeist that followed her around everywhere she went, including the bathroom. It was just time conservation, really, all because there was only one bathroom. But she'd vowed to herself that one day when he made her cross the limits of annoyance she was going to sabotage him and broadcast this to his whole stupid fandom – _because_, seriously. Watching a girl washing up outside of Hollywood movies without even bothering to look away was just totally out of question, brother or no. –A douchebag of a brother? Heck, no.

Anyway, this was generally her everyday schedule.

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**Please review? :3**


	8. Chapter 6

**Meow.**

**Well, here comes another boring chapter... My whole week's been quite boring. :/**

**Enjoy yawning.**

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6.

Rin methodically munched her steadily-mushying piece of breakfast toast bite by bite with a flat scowl. She hated mornings. Next to her, Len drowsily gulped down his steaming coffee between huge yawns. Once in a while his head would sag forward and knock into the mug in his hands, which would almost spill coffee over him and shake him awake again.

If there was one thing Len never failed to do other than get dumped it was making sure the coffee stock didn't run out. The last time he'd run out of coffee about a year ago he'd dropped off over his cereal bowl – and spilled over himself quite messily – spat quite a lot of venomous curses and went upstairs to fetch a bottle of mysterious tablets (of course, behind Mum's back). When Rin asked out of suspicion he'd explained to her it was *** in some exotic language from SleepWalkingLand. She took it from the yawn following that it wasn't anything dangerous.

Rin stirred from her mechanical consumption routine when rhythmic footsteps clattered down the wooden stairs.

Mum hurriedly spread her work papers over half the table and began to sort them into rough piles with sleep-muddled hands. She already had her makeup on, from beneath which dark smudges were just visible under her eyes. Or maybe they were eyeshadow. Or not. As usual, her makeup was quite heavy, like her job apparently required. Rin briefly considered how often she saw Mum without makeup – not so often. In her opinion Mum looked better without.

'Morning, Mum.' Len put down his coffee and peered curiously at the work papers. 'Looks complicated,' he mumbled softly. 'I hate numbers.' Rin just about decided that Mum looked tired.

'Rin, Len, you have something from the fridge for dinner, okay? I won't be around this evening,' Mum said blearily. There was nothing unusual about that – she rarely came back before eight.

'We'll wait for you,' said Len quickly. Rin nodded without paying much attention, turning back to her bowl.

– Wait, what?

Mum knocked the corners of her bundle of papers on the table. She paused to carefully insert the neat stack into her file before answering, 'No, no, you guys can have dinner first. Don't wait for me.'

'You're busy again,' Len said sulkily.

'Well, don't worry. It's alright.'

'We can call up delivery service,' he suggested brightly, glancing at Rin, then turning his buttering – _annoying_ – smile back to Mum. 'You can come home early, have dinner and then finish your work at home. It's quieter too –

'…Can't you?' He tilted his head innocently. Rin blinked at him in surprise. Len, well… Sometimes he was a bit annoying, being a total Miss Sycophant. Why on earth he did that she had no idea; it wasn't like any amount of purring was going to reduce Mum's workload.

'No, it's alright. You guys need to do your homework, right?' Mum sounded a little irritable. 'I'll just come home and eat whatever's there.'

'Pleease?'

'No.'

Len hesitated, then nonchalantly leaned forward to peer upside down at a row of minute graphs through her translucent folder. 'What time are you coming back?'

'Don't bother looking at this. It's not meant to be read anyway,' said Mum, scooping it off the table. 'Well – I don't know, probably around ten or so. It'll be very late. Don't wait for me, alright? Go to sleep first. You can't concentrate in class if you sleep too late.'

Rin glanced at Mum and added snidely, 'And you won't grow taller if you don't sleep enough.'

Mum's eyes narrowed in a frown, looking from Rin and then to Len. 'Coming to think of it you don't seem to have grown much, have you?'

Len shrugged dismissively. 'You see me every day, that's why. Don't… don't come home too late?'

'Bye Mum,' said Rin brightly.

'Bye honey – you'll be alright, yeah?' Mum said as she hurried to the door. Len ran after her and brushed a kiss on her cheek.

He'd just sat back down beside a scowling Rin when they heard the locks on the door clinkering again. A second later Mum pushed the door open and came back in, panting slightly. 'Forgot my wallet,' she explained, looking flustered.

'I'll get it. Your room, right?' Len got up from his seat again and made towards the staircase.

'Len.'

He pulled up short mid-stride and backtracked to stare at Mum with a dopey expression.

'You don't search in a lady's drawers, Len,' she said coolly. 'And don't stand while you're eating. It's fine, I'll get it myself.'

'Oh right. Sorry.' Len ducked his head sheepishly as Rin laughed.

School was pretty much the same as always. When the bell rang she hurried downstairs to wait by the school gate (ignoring Len and his belching shoebox as usual – he needed two in her opinion, one to use as a mailbox) with her phone held up like a shied to hide behind. Needless to report there was no way Kaito would notice her, or not much more than an extra iron post rooted at the side of the gate. He was talking to That Girl as usual. She sighed a total of eight times that day, eventually making Len sigh in exasperation as well. Perhaps sighs were contagious, like yawns

And oh, they had a miniature pillow fight afterwards. Rin had a rather good time taking her stress out on whacking Len over the head and half-smothering him in a pile of pillows. He lost the fight, of course – he _always_ lost.

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**...Kind of short, too. ._.**

**Sorry, I'll try to improve once the long-awaited school holidays start...**


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